In a wide-ranging conversation, Asher Hartman retraces a path from theatre training to performance art, and describes why non-narrative work continues to feel “roomier” than traditional stages. The artist’s early years ran through Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley, where staging “very bizarre” school plays led to study with the Berkeley Rep theater, a theatre major at UCLA, and a stint in fashion design in Tokyo. Returning to Los Angeles, Hartman started a program in a theatre company in downtown LA before shifting toward performance and visual art.
From theatre to performance
Hartman speaks candidly about leaving what is described as American conservative theatre, noting a disconnect with “the kind of classical tale of the white American family, and/or middle class people and their problems.” Performance art offered a different aperture: “Performance allowed me in some way into live art that was much roomier, less based in narrative and definitely less based in storytelling… than theatre.” A pivotal period at Santa Monica College’s Design, Art and Architecture program — “about $100 a semester” — created a bridge into visual arts, followed by studies at CalArts. Alongside this, writing trade reference books helped cover tuition, and painting remained an ongoing interest.
Directing emerged, in part, because others “couldn’t understand” the language of Hartman’s texts. There’s abiding respect for actors and for “cultivating” what performers can do, even as the artist identifies foremost as an artist rather than a theatre director. The pull of process remains central: the unknown is welcomed as a space where the unconscious — and “the spiritual or the non-human” — can surface in the work.
On narrative, audience, and success
Hartman questions rigid life scripts and the way linear storytelling can reify them, recalling near-death experiences that complicated any single “life review.” Reading for people — “which is my business” — has further underlined a belief in multiple selves rather than a single, tidy persona. That skepticism extends to audience expectations in seated venues. Hartman prefers the works to be met as artworks, not as plot-driven theatre with a “beginning, middle, end.”
All of Hartman’s work is based on writing, guided by an energy that resists easy explanation. Integrity to that impulse defines success: changing course to please viewers has “almost every time” led to failure. The practice is rigorous — “my company and I, we rehearse for about a year with every performance” — and aimed at art audiences seeking abstraction paired with conceptual depth. Pragmatically, Hartman collaborates with risk-taking organizations and co-produces projects, but acknowledges the grind: finding money for artists, designers, and materials “is really hard.”
What remains constant is a commitment to the widest possible field for live art — one that resists narrow stories in favor of complexity, risk, and the expansive unknown.
Vía artandcakela.com
